


Sing For Me

by Wizzy



Series: The Way Of Fate [1]
Category: Corpse Party - Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-29
Updated: 2015-09-29
Packaged: 2018-04-23 23:41:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4896754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wizzy/pseuds/Wizzy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When she and her friend Sumiko are transported to Heavenly Host, what fate is waiting for Xiao? After an encounter with a ghost that is claimed to be a murderer, she finds herself more content with this ghostly stranger rather than the living ones she meets. Will she survive this horrific place, or become just another of its countless victims?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Our First Meeting

“Hey! Come on! Get up!”

“Sumiko, if this happened because of that stupid charm you made me do, I am going to kill you,” I groaned, slowly sitting up. When nothing around me looked familiar, I forgot all about what I'd just said. “Where are we?”

“It looks like an old school,” my friend said, looking around. “This place... it looks familiar. I... I think... I've been here before.”

“Ok, so where are we?” I repeated the question, getting slightly annoyed. Standing up, I noticed Sumiko shaking. “Hey, what's with you?”

She didn't respond, so I tried again, getting through this time. “Yo, Sumiko! Come back to reality! What's got ya so scared?”

“I remember... I remember everything now, Xiao,” she said, reminding me that before she'd transferred, she'd lost her memory. No one knew why or how, so she transferred to start over. Some of it came back over time, but everything about what had caused the amnesia in the first place had stayed a mystery. “I know this place. We're going to die.”

“Don't you be getting all negative on me now,” I shouted at her. Sure, it was probably pretty heartless, but I didn't need her getting all weepy on me. That was the last thing we needed. “Where's that little-miss-sunshine Sumiko?”

“You always say I'm too cheerful,” she whimpered.

“Yeah, well, forget about that, ok?” I started to walk down the empty hallway, trying to find some sort of exit. “We gotta get outta here and get home.”

“We can't...” Sumiko cried. Immediately I stopped. Part of me hoped I'd heard wrong. “There isn't a way out! We're trapped until they kill us and then we suffer for the rest of eternity!”

“You said you were here before, didn't you?” I argued. “How'd you get out?”

“I... I don't know! There was an earthquake and when I woke up I was home. None of my friends who came with me made it out!”

“Well then they're probably still here,” I said, making a poor attempt at being optimistic. It'd been about a year since Sumiko had transferred, and that was a long time to survive in a place like this. “We'll find them and we'll get out of here together.”

Before she could say anything, the ground started shaking just as it had before it sent us here. The two of us were thrown to the ground and I blacked out.

 

When I finally woke, I was alone. Everything around me was different.

“Sumiko?” I called out, but there was no response. “Guess I'm alone then. I wonder if she got home like before?”

Soon, I found myself wandering through the seemingly endless hallways until I realized that I was getting nowhere. Every so often I saw a few skeletons, though I doubted they were real. I didn't bother investigating because I simply didn't care. Not like anything could be done anyway.

Sitting down and leaning on a nearby wall, a song my mother used to sing came to my mind. She'd once said it was a song used to calm restless spirits, though I'd never believed it. Sure, I still sang it, but it was because it sounded pretty.

Maybe it was because I was lonely and missed home or maybe because I just needed something to do to keep my nerves under control, who knows, but I began to sing that song. It always seemed more like a lullaby than something to soothe spirits, but I suppose it could work either way.

 

Rest my little one

The day is done, it's time to go

Let your dreams take you far away

Rest my dear until the dawn

Don't be afraid of the darkness

I'll never let it harm you

My arms will shelter you from the cold night's wind

I'll be here, my little one

Staying by your side

Until the morning arise

 

As I sang to myself, I didn't notice that I'd had an audience. It was only one, but still kinda freaky when you didn't know anyone was around. Looking up, I noticed a small boy sitting just a few feet in front of me. For a moment, I didn't realize that he was actually a ghost.

He tilted his head to the side, almost as if he wanted to ask something or if he was confused. To be honest, I wasn't really sure I wanted to know.

“Do you know that song too?” I asked, letting my curiosity get the best of me and trying to guess what he wanted to say.

He nodded then tilted his head again, this time pointing at me and trying to say just one word. “Siihher?”

“Siihher?” I mumbled to myself, trying to understand what he'd tried ask. When I finally got it, I wanted to slap myself in the forehead for being so stupid. “Sister?”

He nodded, pointing at me again.

“Am I your sister? Is that what you're asking?”

He nodded again.

I felt sorry for him. He looked like he'd died quite painfully, and then he was alone. It was really sad, even to someone like me. “No, I'm sorry,” I softly. “Is she here somewhere?”

He shook his head and then tilted it to the side yet again.

“Why don't you talk?” I ask, copying his head tilt. When he just opened his mouth, I realized he couldn't. Or at least he had whole lotta trouble trying to. His tongue had been cut out.

“Poor thing, it must have been awful going through all of that,” I sighed, before another thought hit me. “I don't even know your name. Do you think you can write it?”

Searching around, I found nothing to write on. Just as I was about to give up, I noticed a loose nail and grabbed it, figuring he could use it to scratch his name onto the old wooden floor. I watched closely as he wrote, each letter just barely visible.

“R-Y-O-U. Ryou?” He nodded and I smiled for the first time since I'd gotten here. “That's a nice name, Ryou. My name is Xiao.”

“Well, that's not creepy at all,” a voice said sarcastically nearby. I turned towards it and saw a boy about a year or two older than me with blond hair.

“Says the the guy who sneaks up on little girls,” I said, irritating him. “Hey Ryou, are-” I stopped as I realized the ghost was gone. “Huh. Alone again I guess.”

“You're the one talking to a ghost.”

I ignored him and took a moment to look him over, careful to watch for anything to suggest he was a psychopath. “Kisaragi Academy, right?” I asked cautiously, recognizing the uniform from one of Sumiko's pictures from her old school. “My friend transferred from there.”

“Whatever.”

“You know, if you're gonna be around here, you might as well tell me your name,” I told him, kind of annoyed that he'd showed up, made my ghost friend disappear and then didn't want to say a single word to me. “Especially after you made Ryou go away.”

“That ghost you were talking to is a murderer, or have you not seen all the bodies laying around?”

“He's a child,” I said, not even totally sure why I was defending him. “For your information, he was kind enough to sit and talk with me. He even told me about his sister.” Sure, he didn't exactly talk about it, but I kinda figured there was a connection between me and his sister. He asked if I was her, so you can figure we looked alike. And then there was the song. She must have sang it too.

“You're insane,” he said walking away. Rushing forward, I grabbed his arm, stopping him.

“I have been wandering around for hours and I have no idea where the hell I am and the first person I come across is a ghost who died a painful death and had his tongue cut out. And now you show up and scare him off and then just walk away?” I shout at him. “What the hell is your problem?”

“You are really annoying,” he mumbled, pulling his arm free and walking away.

“You know you could at least tell me your name! Even the ghost was nice enough to do that!” I called after him. This time he stopped and shouted back before continuing on.

“My name is Yoshiki. You happy now?”

“I'm Xiao!” I shouted back, but he either didn't hear or didn't care.


	2. Finding Sumiko

Alone yet again. Until now, I hadn't really noticed how creepy this whole place was. Soon I began wandering around again, not even paying attention to where I was going.

“I wonder if there's any other living people around here?” I asked myself. The question soon answered itself when I felt myself walk right into someone and fall backwards on the ground.

“Hey!” the person complained as they fell. Looking them over, the person turned out to be from the same school as Yoshiki had been from. It was likely they'd come here together. Or I at least assumed it, considering they had worn identical uniforms.

“Finally! Someone alive,” I laughed. After standing, I helped him up. He looked around, almost like he couldn't really see.

“Where are my glasses?”

“Sorry!” Looking around, I quickly found them near my feet. Had I tried to walk, they would definitely have gotten broken. After returning them, it only seemed appropriate that I introduce myself. “I'm Xiao. Who are you?”

“Sakutaro Morishige,” he said calmly.

“Are you a friend of Yoshiki's?” I asked, unconsciously tilting my head to the side as Ryou had.

He seemed surprised that I knew that name. “You know Kishinuma?”

“Ran into him awhile ago. He scared off this ghost I was talking to and then just ditched me,” I said, realizing too late just how crazy that sounded. “Anyway.... I noticed you had the same uniforms, so I assumed you knew him.”

“You wouldn't happen to have run into Mayu, have you?”

“Nope.” I hadn't really seen much since I'd gotten here. “Sumiko, Yoshiki and Ryou are the only ones I've found since I woke up here. Hey, you didn't happen have done some stupid charm thing right before you ended up here, did you? Sumiko called it the Sapiko or Sokiko Ever After charm or something like that.”

“Sachiko?” he suggested. The fact that he knew the name answered my question for me. There was no doubt about it, that charm was what brought us here. Either Sumiko had been mislead about it or we'd screwed up. “If you don't mind, I need to go find Mayu.”

As he turned to walk away, I ran up beside him. “I can help you,” I offered, walking beside him. It wasn't much fun being here alone. “Maybe I'll run into Sumiko too.”

He just shrugged and continued on. For about an hour we walked around, though it felt much longer with nothing but silence and dead bodies all around us.

Tired of all the quiet, I asked the first thing I could think of. “Hey, uh, Sakutaro, right? This girl, Mayu, is she your girlfriend or something?” He stopped immediately and I almost ran into him.

“She's a friend,” he said calmly. When he didn't start walking again, I turned my head to see what he was looking at.

As soon as I realized what it was, I hoped that it wasn't who I thought it was. Of course, that was too much to hope for.

“Sumiko....” As much as I didn't want to believe it, here she was. She lay there in a puddle of what I assumed was her blood.

“Stabbed it seems,” Sakutaro observed. He seemed far too calm about this, but then again, I probably was too.

“You survived this place once, you said,” I mumbled, forgetting that I wasn't alone. “Whatever happened here made you forget everything, but you never let it get you down. Always so happy and full of life. It was quite irritating sometimes. I didn't even think of looking for you. I guess I was just hoping you'd gotten out again. If only I'd known how this place really was, maybe we both could have gotten out together... Hey! What the hell are you doing?” The click of a camera caught my attention. He was taking a picture of her corpse. “Are you insane?”

“I'm using it to keep track of where I've been.” Something about this was definitely off. I seriously doubted that he'd been telling the truth, though I'd stuck with him this long, so might as well stick around a bit longer.

“You know, you don't have to lie. Not like you're the weirdest person I know.” I started off in a direction I hadn't been yet. “We gonna find your friend or what?”

“I've searched there already,” he stated and started to turn another way.

“She could have gotten there after you left,” I countered. “The earthquakes can change the things around you, so she could be there by now.”

 

We searched on, finding nothing worthy of being noticed. Not until we found a body splattered across a small section of wall. “It's strange how I seem to always end up back here,” Sakutaro said, though it was hard to tell who he was talking to. Looking down, a small object seemed to be poking out from underneath the mass of blood and body parts. As Sakutaro knelt down to pull it out, a small plastic thing caught my eye. While he was busy I quickly pulled it out and wiped away the blood, revealing the victim's student ID. Mayu Suzumoto. Silently I hoped it wasn't the girl he'd been searching so hard for.

Before he could notice, the ID was stuffed in my pocket, just in case it was her. Once he was ready, we set off again.

After a long time of no talking, I had to ask. “Hey, uh... Sakutaro?”

“What?”

“That girl, what was her name?”

“Mayu.”

“Yeah, but Mayu what?”

His answer was exactly what I'd feared. To keep him from suspecting anything, I kept silent awhile before asking my next question.

“What if something happened to her?” I was almost too afraid to say it and silently hoped he didn't catch on. In this place, the last thing you'd want to do is tell someone like him that he'd been digging through a mass of human remains that had once been his friend.

“Nothing is going to happen to Mayu.”

He was so certain about it, it hurt just knowing that he would never believe anything could possibly happen to her, even though it already did.

After nothing but silence for awhile, I figured I better go my own way. I couldn't keep Mayu's death from him long, so it was best this way. I just didn't have the heart to tell him the truth. “Um... Sakutaro?”

“What now?”

“I'm... I think we should split up... We could find her faster... and... maybe find a way out...”


	3. You Couldn't Be A Murderer, Could You?

It's funny how things change in situations like this. From the first moment I'd been alone in here, I'd longed for someone to be near. But now I was on my own and it had been my own choice.

I'd given up hope of getting out of here. There wasn't much back home anyway. Sumiko had been my only friend and she was dead now.

Eventually I stopped and sat down against one of the walls of the hallway. It had been so quiet for awhile. Was there even anyone else left alive in this place?

Suddenly I felt something tugging at my sleeve. Ryou. With the familiar face, I felt a lot less alone.

“It's nice to see you again,” I said softly. Maybe what that guy Yoshiki had said had been right. Talking to a ghost... that was pretty crazy. Being happy to see one? That would be potentially insane. But I didn't really mind.

He tried to speak, but without a tongue, the words just couldn't be understood this time. So I took a wild guess at what he could have said.

“Would you like me to sing that song for you?” I offered. Ryou just nodded his head and gave a sad smile.

So I began to sing that song again while thinking of home. My new friend curled up next to me like he was sleeping. It made me wonder if ghosts ever could sleep. He looked so calm and peaceful; there could be no way this innocent little child could be a killer like Yoshiki and Sakutaro had said.

“They're wrong about you,” I whispered, mostly to myself. “No one so gentle could be a murderer.”

“You'd be surprised at what this place can do to you,” a voice interrupted. I turned my head to see a tall boy about the same age as the other two I'd run into. Something about him seemed off, though I couldn't quite figure it out. “Look at yourself.” I wasn't sure I wanted to know where he was going with this. “You must be quite trusting to let a vicious killer so close to you.”

“I trust Ryou more than a creep like you!”

“Poor little girl,” he said much too calmly. “You've lost your mind. Let me put you out of your misery!”

Before the stranger could take one step, Ryou had instantly moved between the two of us. I hadn't even felt him move from my side. One of the good points of being a ghost, I guess.

Something about the little boy seemed to have changed. I'm no aura-reader or anything, but he definitely had a darker, more vicious air about him. Was this the murderous ghost I'd been warned of?

Ryou slowly approached the boy who had threatened me. Whoever he was, he started to back away, confirming my suspicion. Ryou really intended to kill this stranger; but would he kill me if I were to interfere?

Something in me told me to run away, but I couldn't just do nothing. Rushing forward and calling out, I grabbed the shoulder of the ghost child.

Needless to say, that was a BIG mistake.

The very second my hand touched him, my vision went black. I couldn't move. It was like having all of my senses shut down. Throughout my entire body, it felt like millions of pins stabbing into me at random times. I think I may have screamed, but I couldn't tell.

When it stopped, I found myself kneeling on the ground and digging my fingers into my head. What the hell was that? Was it real? There weren't any marks on me, so it must have been an illusion.

Looking up, I found Ryou staring at me. He seemed concerned, and tried to reach for me. When I backed away slightly, he stopped. That was when I realized that the boy who he had been about to attack was gone.

“You didn't hurt him, did you?”

When he shook his head, I let out a sigh of relief. At least I hadn't went through that for nothing. Seeing my reaction, he tilted his head in confusion.

“Looks like you're back to you,” I said, relaxing a bit. “Don't ever do that again...” It came out as more of a request than me scolding him. I sat back down against the wall and the little boy sat down beside me. After a few minutes, I found myself drifting off to sleep.


	4. Taking A Risk

I woke up after what felt like a a few hours. Of course, I had no way of telling what time it was. My cell phone hadn't been working since I woke up here.

Ryou was right next to me, leaning on my shoulder. I'd fallen asleep sitting up. As I stood up, I instantly regretted having slept at all. I hadn't moved at all for so long that it actually hurt to even try to move.

“That was a terrible idea... guess it's not the worst idea I've had though...” I looked to my ghostly companion. He was now standing next to me. Seeing me look at him, he gave me a cute smile and placed his hand in mine.

I'd calmed down quite a bit since the incident with the insane guy, but I was still a little on edge. Despite what he'd almost done, I still couldn't believe this gentle boy could be a killer. It just didn't seem possible.

We wandered around, searching for anyone or anything. Eventually, the two of us found ourselves in a large room underground. Even though I had a fairly strong stomach and things like this never usually got to me, I felt like I wanted to throw up.

In the middle of the room was a large table with a dead body strapped to it. I assumed it was dead anyway; it hadn't been moving. Though of all of it, the buckets of various body parts and internal organs scatter all around the room were got to me the most.

A sudden noise just outside the door grabbed my attention. Letting go of my hand, Ryou motioned for me to get under the table. Just as he disappeared, a man in a red jacket ran into the room. I considered telling him to hide under here, but before I could get the words out, he shut himself in the locker on the wall opposite of the door.

That's when the door was slammed open by a zombie-like man. He carried a large hammer and was dragging a dead body along with him. The body he dropped next to the table and then approached the metal locker. The guy in there was a sitting duck; there was nowhere he could run.

Just before he reached forward to open it, I shot out from under the table. “Hey big guy!” I shouted at him, drawing his attention towards me instead. I kept some distance between us, but I managed to draw him away from the trapped man. “Get out of there you idiot!” I shout to him, still trying to keep the big guy busy.

Once he'd gotten away, I didn't have to worry about keeping him busy. But that did leave one other problem: getting myself away from this guy. We were now going around in circles around the table, or rather, I was trying to go one way, but he'd block whatever way I chose to go.

I couldn't keep this up forever, so I decided to make an extremely risky move. Just after faking like I was gonna go one way, I switched direction, slipping under the table to the other side, narrowly missing being grabbed by the gigantic man. Luckily I'd always been very fast, so I managed to outrun him easily.

Even after I was sure I'd lost him, I kept running. Until I ran right into someone, knocking both of us to the ground. To my surprise, it had been the same man I'd rescued moments ago.

“You! You nearly got both of us killed!” I said, probably being a bit too harsh on him. Suddenly I remembered Sumiko, and how our last conversation had been. I'd been kinda hard on her, then I didn't even bother to search for her when we'd gotten separated.

Standing there yelling at him wasn't going to get us anywhere. For all I knew, he could be killed at any moment. Sure, we were complete strangers, but knowing I'd been so mean to him right before he was killed, I'd never forgive myself for.

What am I thinking? Since when do I care about a complete stranger anyway? I scolded myself. This wasn't like me. Normally I wouldn't care how harsh I was on someone if they weren't my friend, but now I was feeling bad about acting so mean to someone who I didn't even know the name of.

“I'm... I'm sorry. I tend to be a bit on the harsh side when get a little irritated,” I said, easing up a bit. Why do I feel sorry about this? What's changed to make me act so soft? Thinking about it, the only thing that I could think of that had changed was that Sumiko was gone.

Then, after seeing him standing behind the man in the red jacket, I realized what it was. “Ryou...” I didn't realize I'd said it out loud. When the man turned, he freaked out and took off in the other direction before I had a chance to even say anything.

“I guess others won't even give you a chance, huh?” I walked over to the ghost child. What was it about him that was making me acting so different? Probably better not to think about it. “Well, you got me, so what do the rest of them matter?” I smiled a little and offered him my hand. Before he could take it, we were joined by another voice.

“You're a strange one, aren't you?” a little girl's voice said, followed by insane laughter. There, standing just a few feet away was another ghost. It was the ghost of a little girl in red dress.


	5. The Murderous Ghost

I'm normally not the type to be afraid of ghosts. Ryou is proof enough of that. But this ghost, this little girl in a red dress, something about her terrified me.

My entire body felt cold, like it could completely freeze over at any second. This was one of those murderous ghost children, no doubt about it.

She just watched me, her cold eyes never straying from me. I couldn't move. No matter how much I tried, I just couldn't. So this was how it felt to really be afraid.

A small hand grabbed mine, snapping me out of my daze. Even though I could move, I still didn't. My focus was solely on the ghost standing straight ahead of me.

Ryou's hand tugged at mine, trying to tell me something. When I didn't react, he then tried to speak. It was just one word that I couldn't make out, but when he tugged at my hand again, it became quite obvious. He meant for me to run.

I turned away from the little girl in the red dress and ran as fast as I could in the opposite direction. Soon enough, I came to a gap in the floor. It was only a couple feet across, but it'd still be risky. Should I do it? Glancing around, there seemed to be no alternate route nearby.

I guess this is my only hope, I told myself, trying to calm my nerves. This was the first time in my life that I'd ever been really, truly scared. The encounter with crazy guy was nothing compared to this. With a running start, I leaped over the gap.

As I landed safely on the other side, my ankle twisted. It hurt a lot, but with my life at risk like this, I could run a marathon on it if I had to. It's not like it was seriously injured; it wasn't even a sprain. But even so, it still hurt pretty badly.

After remembering how desperately Ryou had urged me to run away, I sprang up and continued running. I didn't stop until I thought I'd gotten far enough from her.

Stopping a moment to catch my breath, I looked in the direction I'd come from. No sign of the little girl. I let out a sigh of relief. I... I made it...

I smiled and turned back to the direction I'd been running. That's when my smile turned into a scream. Standing there was the ghost of the little girl in the red dress.

“My name is Sachiko and I'm going to kill you now, 'kay?” she said in calm, sweet tone that a kid would use when asking very nicely for someone to come play with them. If I were being honest, I'd have to say that was a whole lot creepier than the crazy guy.

Immediately, I ran back away from her. Ryou tried to warn me for a reason, and I wasn't about to find that out the hard way. However, I didn't get very far before I tripped over a loose board that had been sticking up, causing further injury to my ankle.

I couldn't run; I was trapped. The girl just giggled at me as I tried to scoot away from her. It was not use, she got closer faster than I could move away. In moments she was standing right above me, holding a very large pair of bloody scissors.

Had she had those a moment ago? Maybe I was just too scared to notice them before. But now here we were, this would be the last thing I'd ever see. Those scissors would be the last thing I ever felt.

I'd never thought that there was a chance that I'd actually die. Sure, everyone dies eventually, but I never even thought about my own death. Never once did I ever even wonder what it was like to die. Now death was staring me right in the face. For a moment, I felt like Life was just sitting back and saying “Screw you, Xiao.”

Sachiko raised the weapon in her hand up, preparing to stab me wherever she pleased. Knowing I didn't stand a chance, I resigned myself to my fate. Bracing myself for the pain, I closed my eyes, waiting for the scissors to come plunging down into me.


	6. The End Or Just Another Beginning?

I held my arms up in a defensive position as I waited for the ghost's weapon to stab into me. But it never came.

Slowly, I opened my eyes. What I saw was not what I expected at all. This wasn't Heavenly Host Elementary; I was back in my school.

Had it just been a dream? My entire body was shaking too much for it to have been something as simple as a dream. Glancing about, Sumiko was nowhere in sight.

“It was real,” I realized. “I was really there. I... I survived that nightmare.”

Then it hit me. Sumiko had died in there, so didn't that mean she was dead in this world too? What was I going to tell everyone? No one would ever believe me about the cursed school.

“Maybe it would have just been better if I'd died in there with Sumiko,” I said, deciding that I would say nothing about this to anyone unless they asked about Sumiko.

“No it wouldn't,” said an unfamiliar voice. I assumed it was a boy's, but until I looked at the person it had come from, I couldn't be sure. Standing there, was the ghost of a little boy. Ryou.

“Ryou, did you...” I wasn't sure how to end that sentence, but I didn't really need to. Ryou knew what I'd meant, just as I had known the things he had tried to say when I'd been trapped in that cursed school. Then it dawned on me that he was talking clearly. “You can talk now.”

“A girl and her friend gave me my tongue back,” he explained. That must have happened while I'd been running away from Sachiko. “I didn't think I could really get you out, Sister.”

I made my way over to the little boy as best I could. When I stopped in front of him, I just hugged him tightly. So what if he was a ghost, he'd saved my life. Not just once, but twice.

“Thank you, Ryou.” That's all I could say. But really, what more was needed?

“She's angry with me, so don't ever go back there. Alright Sis?” His voice was sad. But then again, who wouldn't be sad? If you had been through everything that he had and sounded happy, you were definitely insane.

“Everything's alright now,” I said, still holding him. “You... you can't stay, can you?” The boy just shook his head.  _So this might be the last time I ever get to see him._ “I know you can't come back, but I know we'll meet again some day. I'll never forget about you, little brother.”

“I'll miss you Sister.”

 

It's been three months since the two of us had said goodbye. No one even knew who Sumiko was, and the only thing that made me sure that what happened in Heavenly Host was real was my sprained ankle that I'd returned with.

I'd been wanting to come here for awhile now, though locating this particular place took quite a bit longer than I had anticipated. As I walked among the many tombstones with my newly made friend, I finally found the one I had been searching for.

“Here it is, Tomohiro,” I told him. He didn't say much anymore, but rumors said that he'd once talked of a haunted school where his friends were all killed. What caught my attention was the fact that no one had ever heard of these friends.

 _Ryou Yoshizawa, died age 8,_ the tombstone said. It had taken awhile to find this place, but it was worth it. Placing some flowers at the foot of it, I knelt next to his grave and Tomohiro did the same.

“I miss you little brother,” I said, talking to no one in particular. As I thought back to the moments we'd shared, I could have sworn I'd heard his voice calling me.

_Sing for me, Sister?_

Whether it was just my imagination or not, I didn't care. I sang that song anyway. It had been our little song, the one little piece that had brought us together in the first place. Even now, it still connected us.

_Rest my little one_

_The day is done, it's time to go_

_Let your dreams take you far away_

_Rest my dear until the dawn_

_Don't be afraid of the darkness_

_I'll never let it harm you_

_My arms will shelter you from the cold night's wind_

_I'll be here, my little one_

_Staying by your side_

_Until the morning arise_

“I love you, little brother,” I whispered, lightly brushing my fingers against the cold stone. “Come on, Tomohiro. We better be getting back.”

As the two of us stood up and turned to leave, I heard the voice again. It was just a couple words, but it was enough to bring a smile to my face as I held onto my dear friend's hand, leading him out of the quiet little cemetery.

_I love you, Sister._


End file.
